Reading the different threads, I get the impression that some want more experienced people to do their work. They prefer the "shortcut" to learning for themselves. So my questions is what task do you outsource? Which ones will you continue to do yourself? And why?
I personally try not to outsource anything. I've worked on the backend in website development, and the marketing side for many years; my biggest lack is design. Thankfully my wife took up that role and does most of our design work while I handle anything technical. The only things we do outsource are the translation of the design from the PSD to whatever system we are using, lately magento and wordpress have been the two major systems we outsource design for, although we continue to expand what we learn so that we can stop the outsourcing as soon as possible.
Well you can outsource tasks that consume a lot of time or require an expertise that you do not have.. Tasks such as web programming, article writing, bookmarking and submissions can be outsourced .. However you cannot outsource tasks such as niche research, creating business strategies etc. Remember you can scale up things only when you outsource big chunk of your work.. That is the secret of big dogs... They do outsource almost everything Regards,
When you want to outsource, think outsourcers as your employee. So now ask yourself that if you have employees what works you will assign to them and what work you will keep hidden from them. For example overall management, niche research, advertiser info, business plan etc should be handled by you or your managers. However programming, web design, content writing etc can be outsourced to outsourcers or your employees.
I think that it would be effective if you outsource such activities as some kinds of SEO techniques, for example, directory submitting, blog posting, forum posting and so on. This kind of activity takes away much time and does not require much knowledge and qualification.
At the moment, I'm not outsourcing anything but I am planning on hiring a professional writer to share some of the writing responsibilities for one of my blogs effective in February 2010. Certainly, I can continue to do the bulk of the writing myself, but I've gotten very busy over the past few months. Outsourcing shouldn't always be considered to be a sign of weakness, rather good planning on the part of the person seeking assistance.
I think you should gradually work up to the point of outsourcing everything. The 4 Hour working week is a good book about this.
Normally, people outsource blog postings and SEO tasks.. but ofcourse you need to analyze first how your employees will manage to do the task, if effectively or not. There are times that you will need to test them first to know how they work.
Outsourcing is key point to success. Your own time is not scalable - you just have a limited amount of hours in your day. But you can hire unlimited number of people and get results almost instantly. The only limitation for outsourcing is money. Even management is not a problem since you can hire a manager to manage your outsourcers. As for money - if you plan to do something yourself in business, that means that you plan to earn money with it. And if you plan to earn money, that means that you can pay some money to have this job done.
Sounds like being the Aarmy General instead of the food soldier. Some things you can delegate, others you can't and won't. Thanks for sharing!
smile633, I don't outsource at the moment but I've worked as a freelance writer before. Just to add to what's already been said, you want to outsource some things but not others. Some of what you can outsource safely are: Routine tasks like article submission General content writing like how-to's Technical stuff that you can't do on your own or would take too much of your time to learn (like programming if you're a non-programmer) Language translation Other "low risk", "low impact" tasks You don't want to outsource material that needs a lot of "personal touch." If you outsource blog posts that are supposed to come from one person (you), you might spend so much time editing them just to make them sound right. And that defeats the purpose of outsourcing. Also if it's very important to you that the content meet your standards, you don't want to outsource to just any writer. You either do it yourself or get someone with proven skills to do it, hired or not. Last point: If you're going to outsource, plan ahead how you're going to communicate with the writer/programmer/designer. If you can IM, it's better and faster than e-mail. Good luck to you.
I usually outsource forum posting, forum moderation, link building, directory submission (not so much now) and other tasks that are extensive and don't require much thinking.
I tend to outsource graphics. I have the ability to it myself but I lack the artistic vision to make the graphics stand out.
Sometimes its hard to outsource forum posting, it could get you in trouble when the the person you hired will make a spammy comments even for blog comments.. Blog posting, bookmarking, article submission are some of the tasks that I outsource.